Dogfish Head craft brewery has been expanding and purchasing new brewing equipment, but it needed a better plan for managing the maintenance of all new equipment.

Growing rapidly from humble beginnings in 1995, Dogfish Head is one of the largest craft breweries in the mid-Atlantic region and now brews more than 34 unique beers sold in 27 states. The company recently added more brewing equipment to increase its daily brewing capacity from 700 barrels to 900 barrels. With such growth and new equipment, the brewery realized the need for a robust enterprise asset management/computerized maintenance management system (EAM/CMMS) solution.

Dogfish Head had been using a home-grown, work request system a featuring combination of paper and spreadsheets, but the system didn’t allow the staff to schedule preventive maintenance tasks or track history and maintenance operations costs. Dogfish Head Maintenance Manager John Wren realized the need for a maintenance management system when he came on board in July 2010. He had heard about TabWare through various trade publications and AssetPoint white papers.

After evaluating several EAM/CMMS solutions, the brewer chose TabWare from AssetPoint to manage its assets and maintenance. Dogfish Head then implemented TabWare to track and manage all aspects of its operations including production and packaging equipment, which directly affects company revenue. The software also allows Dogfish Head to create a preventive maintenance system, where routine maintenance can be scheduled and ensure the right people, parts and documentation to do the work safely and efficiently are in place.

“In our business, we can’t afford to have downtime because it affects the quality of our product,” says Wren. “If our production lines go down, we have to throw away beer. As we evaluated various EAM solutions, we chose TabWare because it is truly easy to use, and provides us with the data necessary to maximize productivity, eliminate unplanned downtime of our equipment and make us more energy-efficient as an environmentally conscious company.”

For more information, visit AssetPoint’s website and the TabWare page.